ADL Reports on Growing Threat of Skinheads and Revisionists

June 20, 1989

NEW YORK (Jun. 19)

The Skinhead movement is taking its recruitment efforts from the streets to the schools, and the weapons in the hands of young Skinheads are becoming more deadly.

A new report conducted by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith chronicles the growth in the number of neo-Nazi Skinheads — young people who shave their heads, wear Nazi insignia, and spread hatred and violence against members of minority groups.

“Skinheads Target the Schools, ” a 32-page report, was released by ADL over the weekend, along with two other reports, “Holocaust Revisionism: Reinventing the Big Lie” and “Blacklisting Israel: A Current Perspective on the Arab Boycott.”

The Skinhead report says that the organization now has 3,000 members in 31 states — up from 2,000 in 21 states last October. During the past six months, Skinheads have been responsible for vandalism of religious institutions, especially synagogues, as well as numerous assaults on members of minority groups.

In the schools, Skinheads have scrawled racist graffiti on lockers and distributed white supremacist leaflets.

Although the preferred weapons of Skinheads are knives, bats, chains and steel-toed boots, the possession of handguns, shotguns and even semiautomatic weapons is becoming more common.

“The possession of death weapons by volatile youngsters filled with racial and religious hatred warrants the urgent attention of law enforcement officials,” the report says.

ARAB BOVCOTT SAID TO HAVE WEAKENED

In its report on Holocaust revisionism, the ADL warns that anti-Semitic scholars and others are continuing to deny the reality of Nazi atrocities and are spreading that message on radio talk shows, in speeches to college campuses, and in newspapers, newsletters and videotapes.

“There is a new revisionist trend — the emergence of historical scholarship on the Holocaust which acknowledges that the Nazi genocide took place, but challenges the well-accepted understanding of the motives behind it,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director and a Holocaust survivor.

As examples of this trend, the report points out that some legitimate historians in the United States and Germany have been claiming that the Holocaust was comparable to atrocities by other nations prior to or during World War II and should not be singled out as unique in history.

ADL’s report on the Arab boycott against Israel is somewhat more encouraging. It finds that the boycott has weakened in the past decade.

Anti-boycott measures by the United States are credited for this progress. Since the creation of the U.S. Commerce Departmet’s Office of Anti-Boycott Compliance in 1978, more than 300 individuals and firms have been charged with violating anti-boycott regulations.

But the report says that many countries in Western Europe and the Far East, afraid of losing their Arab markets, have been complying with the boycott. The report says that Japan, in particular, has not only caved in to boycott pressure, but avoids trade with Israel in anticipation of boycott requests.